MONTREAL - Guillaume Lévesque’s moment of inspiration came to him in a darkened movie theatre, while he was watching Richard Desjardins’s 2007 documentary on Quebec’s Algonquin community. The film, called The Invisible Nation, was a study in tragedy, the story of an indigenous people pushed off their ancestral lands, and forced for the most part onto reserves plagued with health and social problems, bad housing and worse services.

Lévesque’s heart went out to the Algonquin. He was shocked at how they lived, the rotting wood of their houses, the mould on the walls, the architectural style that was 1960s southern Canada suburban, totally unsuited to northern Quebec winters, and families with more than one generation in the same house.

Lévesque is an architect. As he watched the film, he told himself he might not be able to do much about righting the historic wrongs that have left the Algonquin with no title to lands their ancestors first inhabited more than 700 years ago, but he could do something about the housing.

“I went to the Algonquin village of Kitcisakik and offered the community something modest, something I could deliver: help in renovating two houses,” the 33-year-old Montrealer said. And deliver he did. Five years on, Lévesque has won one of the 2012 Governor General’s Medals for architecture for his work at Kitcisakik as a member of Emergency Architects. This group is a United Nations-recognized humanitarian organization in existence since 2001. It has worked in stricken areas around the world and right here at home.

By the end of next year, said Lévesque, between 30 and 33 of the 100 houses in Kitcisakik – which is about 100 kilometres south of Val d’Or in De La Vérendrye park – will have been renovated and new ones built. “We are designing a new prototype house according to what the Algonquin want in a home:­ eastern exposure in the morning, built up into a second storey instead of sprawling, a communal room with skylights to see the night sky. The need for housing is there. The birth rate is very high here and the population young,” said Lévesque. “Half the village’s population of 485 is under the age of 18.”

Lévesque is not working alone. Volunteers come up from Université Laval and elsewhere. Frontiers Foundation, a non-profit aboriginal organization created to promote the advancement of communities that are struggling, lent Kitcisakik two mobile sawmills. Thanks in part to these sawmills, about 20 members of the community have trained as carpenter-joiners and by next year will be certified. Hector Penosway is one of the carpenters who will be certified within a few months. “It’s our first experience with this kind of project,” said Penosway, who has worked on his own house. “Everyone is very motivated. We’re happy with the results.” The Quebec government put $1.4 million over three years into the project.

More than $500,000 in money and material has also been donated by private companies, including BMR, Sico and Soprema. Goodfellow Inc., Canada’s largest manufacturer and distributor of hardwood lumber, has donated lumber and has expressed its interest in buying any surplus lumber produced in Kitcisakik. “The Algonquin are people of the forests,” said Lévesque. “They should be able to make their living from the forests.” But the Algonquin are considered squatters by Hydro-Québec, which owns the land they live on. Despite pressure from the federal government, they have refused to move onto a reserve nearby. To them, said Lévesque, reserves are a dead end of misery, not what they want for their children.

Life in Kitcisakik has enough of its own problems. There’s no running water. Unrenovated houses lack interior and exterior cover. They’re badly insulated. Electricity is produced with noisy, expensive and polluting generators. Hydro-Québec, which charges most homeowners in the province less than eight cents per kWh for electricity, bills the Algonquin of Kitcisakik more than $4 per kWh. Yet there is a Hydro-Québec dam on the town’s shoreline on Lac Dozois that could be used to generate hydro power. “Hydro-Québec acts like we don’t exist,” said Penosway.

Lévesque hopes that things can continue to improve in Kitcisakik. In 2010, the federal government built an elementary school in the town. This means that at least the youngest children don’t have to stay in Val d’Or during the week to go to school. “They missed their families,” said Lévesque.

Lévesque hopes the province will start a Phase 2 of the rebuilding program once the $1.4 million runs out next year. “There’s an add-on effect where newly certified workers can train other workers, more houses can be renovated and new ones built.”

It could be the start of a new chapter in Quebec’s shared history with its indigenous people.

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